Messe11: Lionstracs Show New Groove XR Rack

In the frenzy that is showtime, when we can shoot 100+ video news items in a couple of days, it occasionally happens that one or two items fall through the cracks... and such it was with this piece.

As you'll see, there's quite a lot of information to get across for this particular piece of gear, and the sheer length of the video meant that it needed a bit of extra editing work which fell outside our normally blazing-fast news pipeline... ;-]

But we've had a special request for this, so here it is - all 14 minutes of it.

It's worth a look though, especially if you're inclined to want to use a hardware box to not only play plugins, but have the grunt to power the whole show in a live situation.

In a nutshell, Lionstracs have taken the capabilities of their performance oriented uber-workstation keyboards, and put it into the Groove XR rack unit, with all the controls and interface to enable you to drive the whole shebang from the front panel if you wish.

It's a powerful beastie - the Linux based OS allows 10 VST Host Engines running concurrently and up to 16 virtual desktops - there's live pitch-shifting, and a powerful arranger which allows for song elements to be selected on the fly to throw into the mix - it's based on a 'style' principle, but it's flexible enough to allow for other uses too.

Anyway, the video says it all much more capably than I can, so I'll leave you in the hands of Rob Sherratt, who will give you the full-fat version.

So it's very similar to the Receptor, but works in a more modular way withe the sound engines being a parallel of the slots on a Receptor mixer. He doesnt mention if you can view the GUI on ur Comp screen, and of course as it runs Linux it'll be using WINE to host Windows VST in addition to the very limited amount of Linux plugins out there. It wont run Mac plugins which he incorrectly states it will.. It's a niche market as I found when I handled receptor for muse in the uk and as both it and receptor are quite expensive they may struggle to get a hold in the market in times like these :-(

08-Jun-11 04:41 PM

Rog Said...

Looks very interesting!

09-Jun-11 06:37 AM

P.D. Said...

Fallen through the cracks? C'mon sonicstate, that's a lame excuse. It more looks to me that this piece of gear could get a dangerous competitor for some other similar products - at least if it really fullfills what they promise it can do. So I'm really curious for some objective reviews to come.

10-Jun-11 06:21 AM

fisher Said...

come on dude take easy on dominco...

12-Jun-11 02:53 AM

Ricardo P. Said...

Being a Mac user, it would be wonderful to port my existing plug ins to this machine. But i fail to see how is that possible. Can perhaps Domenico explain?

13-Jun-11 03:56 PM

Phil Said...

As I can see it's Linux using WINE, so this requires windows plugins (dlls). However most mac side plugins also come with a windows installer/dll, so I guess you simply could use this one for Groove XR